Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a lens barrel installed in an image pickup apparatus, such as a digital camera, a digital video camera, and relates to an image pickup apparatus equipped with the lens barrel.
Description of the Related Art
In an image pickup apparatus like a digital camera, a diameter of a lens group constituting a lens barrel increases as magnification increases in recent years. Particularly, a diameter of a lens arranged at the nearest side to an object among lens groups tends to become large. On the other hand, a demand of miniaturization of a digital camera etc. requires high accuracy of a lens position in order to satisfy high optical performance.
Moreover, since the improvement in accuracy of parts constituting a lens barrel or the improvement in performance of a lens is insufficient to satisfy the above-mentioned optical performance, the lens position is individually adjusted for each lens barrel. For example, an eccentricity adjustment and an inclination adjustment of a lens, or a tracking adjustment that adjusts a gap between adjacent lenses is performed (See Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2010-66720 (JP 2010-66720A)).
Incidentally, since the lens position adjustment needs time and cost, the lens position adjustment may be stopped at a stage where the part accuracy and the lens position accuracy in a manufacturing process are stabilized. In this case, when the part accuracy or the lens position accuracy begins to vary after that, the lens position adjustment is needed again.
However, the technique disclosed in the above-mentioned publication needs filling up a gap for adjustment between a lens holding frame and an adjustment frame with adhesive to fix the lens holding frame even when the lens position is not adjusted. Accordingly, in the case where the lens position was not adjusted, it is difficult to adjust the lens position even if the accuracy of parts or the accuracy of the lens position varies after that.